I did not want this to be the answer. I want to say that first, because a site about trying things is a lot more fun to write than a site whose best-performing entry is being careful at the checkout screen.

But I have a notebook with two years in it, and when you put every line on the same footing, the thing that wins is not any of the things I have driven, built or filmed for.

Putting Everything on the Same Footing

The comparison only became possible once I was counting properly — once every entry had hours against it, including the unpaid setup, and mileage where mileage applied.

Because that is the whole trick of this comparison, and it is why nobody makes it. Earning is quoted in gross and saving is quoted in net, so they never appear on the same page. A delivery evening announces itself as a dollar figure. Not paying nine dollars in fees announces itself as nothing at all — there is no screen anywhere that congratulates you.

So I put them in the same column. Money that ended up staying in the account, against the hours and miles it took to keep it there.

The Three Reasons It Was Not Close

No cost of goods. A delivery evening costs gas and a share of a car I cannot replace. Four minutes of checking three apps costs four minutes. There is no input to subtract, which means the gross and the net are the same number — the only line in my notebook where that is true.

No unpaid overhead. The hours audit found that delivery loses about a third of its rate to getting ready, dead time and winding down. Deal hunting has none. It happens inside a purchase that was already happening, in a moment I was already standing in the kitchen.

It is not income. I am not going to give tax advice and I do not know your situation. What I will say is that a dollar I earn and a dollar I do not spend are not the same size, and the difference goes the wrong way for the earning, and this is entirely obvious once stated and I had never once factored it in.

Put those together and the effective rate on four minutes of checking beats a six-hour Saturday by a margin I checked three times because I did not believe it.

What This Answer Costs, Which Is Mostly Pride

The honest cost of this being the answer is that it does not scale and it is not a story.

It does not scale in the plainest possible sense: there is a floor at zero. You cannot save more than you spend, so the whole strategy is capped at the size of your grocery and takeout budget, and once you are ordering carefully there is no next level. Delivery has a low ceiling too, but at least the ceiling is above the floor of what I already spend.

And it is not a story. Nobody has ever been impressed by this. I have watched a table of people get animated about a delivery app and go completely flat when I mentioned that the actual answer is checking three apps before you order.

"That's not a hustle, man, that's just being cheap," John said, and I have decided he is describing the same activity from a less flattering angle rather than making a substantive point.

Although he is not entirely wrong, and there is a version of this that tips over into being unpleasant to live with, which I have visited.

How I Actually Split It Now

The split I landed on is that deal hunting handles the recurring, and earning handles the unexpected.

The recurring stuff — Thursday takeout, groceries, the things that happen whether or not I think about them — gets the four minutes, because that is where the reliable margin is. Anything unexpected, where I need a specific amount of money by a specific Friday, gets the delivery app, because that is what a lever is for.

What I stopped doing is trying to make the earning side handle the recurring stuff. That was the arrangement for about a year and it meant every ordinary month required evenings out, which is a bad trade against something I could partly solve standing still.

The winner is being slightly annoying at the checkout screen. It has no ceiling worth mentioning and no story attached, and it has outperformed everything else in the notebook.

Note: Everyday Hustle Jeff is the written side of a digital series. These accounts are composite and dramatized. Any figures are what they were on the day, for one person, and are not a projection, a track record, or advice.